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The Genius Guide to Martial Archetypes is now available!
Super Genius Games presents the next entry in its popular "Archetype" line of products, presenting alternate sets of class abilities. The Genius Guide to Martial Archetypes presents five new archetypes packages (the whip-wielding Blacksnake, hit-and-run Harrier, amazingly able Physical Exemplar, mystic smiting Spellhammer, and ki-focused Youxia) with new combat-oriented abilities.
It also presents the base archetype packages for every class in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Core Rulebook, every class from each Genius Guide published to date (including the popular time thief and vanguard) and (for the first time) the classes from the Advanced Player's Guide.
Get it from Paizo here!
did you say whip wielding!!? It was already sold, but now it is faster!
Blacksnake - I have always liked the idea of using whips in dnd. I liked the 3.0 whipmaster and have created a version of it in 3.5 more then once. This archtype is way better then anything i could come up with and it works from day one (level 1) of whatever class you add this to. Really great stuff.
I like the harrier, could be fun to put together a group of these as enemies for my party. Though the raid tokens of each might be a bit of a pain to track.
I also really like the youxia. Its great for adding an eastern flavor to lots of classes and it is flexible to work with lots of difference concepts. Real quality stuff.
I'm probably now going to be spending half the day building characters just for the fun of it, this pdf has given me a ton of ideas.
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I envisioned myself using actual pennies.I like the harrier, could be fun to put together a group of these as enemies for my party. Though the raid tokens of each might be a bit of a pain to track.
In the playtests, we found a couple of small bowls and some cheap poker chips worked a charm.
I'm really glad you folks are enjoying this. :D
ok now I am intrigued enough to buy it.
Steve Russell
ok now I am intrigued enough to buy it.
Steve Russell
Was it the description of the blacksnake and harrier that intrigued you, or the commentary on "raid tokens?" Both made me regret I gotta wait a bit before buying this one!
Was it the description of the blacksnake and harrier that intrigued you, or the commentary on "raid tokens?" Both made me regret I gotta wait a bit before buying this one!
If I may be so presumptuous, DG, I think the Blacksnake will be right up your alley. ;^)
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Was it the description of the blacksnake and harrier that intrigued you, or the commentary on "raid tokens?" Both made me regret I gotta wait a bit before buying this one!If I may be so presumptuous, DG, I think the Blacksnake will be right up your alley. ;^)
My mind went places on that comment that it likely shouldn't have... wonder what that says about me. :)
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My mind went places on that comment that it likely shouldn't have... wonder what that says about me. :)Was it the description of the blacksnake and harrier that intrigued you, or the commentary on "raid tokens?" Both made me regret I gotta wait a bit before buying this one!If I may be so presumptuous, DG, I think the Blacksnake will be right up your alley. ;^)
That you're kewl. :-)
If I may be so presumptuous, DG, I think the Blacksnake will be right up your alley. ;^)
I think that's a pretty safe presumption, mister !
My mind went places on that comment that it likely shouldn't have... wonder what that says about me. :)
Oh no, no. I'm pretty sure your mind went exactly where mine now is. And as a result, I may have to swap some lines in this week's ramen-noodle budget and buy this now.
That you're kewl. :-)
I agree entirely!
Oh it made me want to buy something too... and the PDF. :)
LOL
I am curious about the Blacksnake..My real world attempts (and I use the term loosely) to use a whip have gone so painfully, I guess maybe my character will have better luck
Being a huge fan of period martial arts movies I fell in love with the Youxia archetype. The more "Chinese" myth and oriental gaming the better.
You can bet that all my Feng Shui players will see this and in turn be picking it up.
I'd love to see a Oriental Adventures setting that stayed more in line with the Chinese Style setting.
Man, I'm GLAD I was so presumptuous! I needed a laugh like that! ;^)
Being a huge fan of period martial arts movies I fell in love with the Youxia archetype. The more "Chinese" myth and oriental gaming the better.
You can bet that all my Feng Shui players will see this and in turn be picking it up.
I'd love to see a Oriental Adventures setting that stayed more in line with the Chinese Style setting.
Then you should check out Heroes of the Jade Oath by Rite Publishing. It has a Chinese Focus and uses Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved as it's base system.
Currently, Rite Publishing is releasing conversion PDFs of some of the material in Heroes of the Jade Oath for the Pathfinder system, as well. The ones out so fare are one conversion PDF each for the Enlightened Scholar and the Kusa; new classes introduced in Heroes of the Jade Oath.
Re Blacksnake conversation: I am embarrassed to say that my mind went there pretty quick, too.
Being a huge fan of period martial arts movies I fell in love with the Youxia archetype. The more "Chinese" myth and oriental gaming the better.
You can bet that all my Feng Shui players will see this and in turn be picking it up.
I'd love to see a Oriental Adventures setting that stayed more in line with the Chinese Style setting.
Then you should check out Heroes of the Jade Oath by Rite Publishing. It has a Chinese Focus and uses Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved as it's base system.
Currently, Rite Publishing is releasing conversion PDFs of some of the material in Heroes of the Jade Oath for the Pathfinder system, as well. The ones out so fare are one conversion PDF each for the Enlightened Scholar and the Kusa; new classes introduced in Heroes of the Jade Oath.
Re Blacksnake conversation: I am embarrassed to say that my mind went there pretty quick, too.
I will give it a look. I'd love any of the converted Pathfinder stuff.
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I reviewed the beta of Jade Oath. I liked it, I just wish they had made the whole thing for Pathfinder.Linky!
Ok they changed how they sell the product here and just made a new page for it. The old one and my old review here at paizo is gone. But I went and copied it from ENworld and posted it up here at paizo and revised my review slightly with the lower price. You can find it here.
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I reviewed the beta of Jade Oath. I liked it, I just wish they had made the whole thing for Pathfinder.Linky!Ok they changed how they sell the product here and just made a new page for it. The old one and my old review here at paizo is gone. But I went and copied it from ENworld and posted it up here at paizo and revised my review slightly with the lower price. You can find it here.
Coolio.
for the genius guide, i was curious to know what other gms are making their players sacrifice in class abilities to imput these new archetypes. i didnt read anything in the pdf about sacrificing any abilities, except maybe its up to the gm of what you lose for those abilities. any imput?
I reviewed the beta of Jade Oath. I liked it, I just wish they had made the whole thing for Pathfinder.
You people keep talking like that and we might have to do something to get you to keep quiet. ;)
Well one of my players took the Ranger and got rid of both templates then added Spell Blaze and Youxia to it for a Swordsman based off of the Stormriders movie. It worked out pretty well he is having a lot of fun with it.
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On that note, it feels like the barbarian is the class that looses the most when taking an archetype (rage and rage powers is huge, specially with the new APG ones). Could you give me some insightin the playtesting that took you guys to choose to make it so?
Since the loss of existing templates is a huge part of what makes archetype packages work
Rage powers are great, and yes the APG steps them up a bit. But they are far from all a barbarian has going for him. Even without rage powers, a barbarian has d12 hit points, 4 skill points, fast movement, uncanny dodge and improved uncanny dodge, and DR, all layered on top of a full BAB.
Most of the archetypes grant you some nice offensive abilities. Some, like Blacksnake, aren't a great match for a barbarian-without-rage build. Others, like Harrier, work fine in replacing rage powers. I actually have a barbarian with Harrier instead of Berserker in a playtest game, and she cranks out damage like no-one's business. She normally earns one or two raid points every round of combat. When she tacks Hurry on, she's moving faster than anyone but mounted characters, and thus can dash about the battlefield and hit weakened foes. She uses momentum nearly every round, taking +1d6 damage on what is normally already a Vital Strike. IN short, she's maximized the fighting style that suits the Harrier, and with the built-in barbarian class abilities she's extremely effective.
If that character had any amount of rage at all, she'd be massively overpowered.
Obviously any time you are playing with alternate class powers, you're juggling character balance and character concept. If you want someone with berserker abilities, no archetype package is going to serve you better than playing a barbarian. Since I don't want to create power creep or make the normal classes useless, I don't think anything SGG produces *should* invalidate the barbarian-as-written.
That does mean there are going to be archetype/class combinations that are sub-par. I see that as being the same as their being class/feat combinations that are sub-par. You COULD give a sorcerer Catch off Guard, but in most cases you have more effective choices. Usually, the Weapon Champion archetype is more effective for fighters, because even without their Battle master archetype package, they get more feats, which combines nicely with the Weapon Champion abilities. But you can absolutely make an effective barbarian/Weapon Champion, and if that fits your character concept great!
Rage is SO powerful, that in playtesting we found adding ANY amount of rage to any other archetype package was overpowering. To make sure no GM ever cursed the day she allowed archetype packages into her game, we had to take away all the barbarian's rage. That means some archetypes work better for the rageless barbarian than others, but I'm okay with that.
My game just added a barbarian physical exemplar. And he rocks it hard! The build would be SO overpowered if it had rage. As it is he is second only to the fighter in DPR. Of course, though he isnt any more immune to charm, so this will work fine when they run into a beguiler NPC next game. ;)
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So, how about archetypes and multi-classing.
The idea I have in mind would be:
first level fighter
monk from then onward
Would it be unbalanced, brokken or in some other way wrong for me to give both classes the youxia archetype and have them stack?
I would lose the bonus feat at fighter 1 and all of the monk Ki Master abilities but I would (eventually) get 20 levels of youxia archetype.
Good, bad, what?
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The NPC turned out so well that I decided to make him a recurring ally instead of a one encounter thing (a half Ñandu Lapith was just too cool), so thanks for the insight.
Also I was curious if you guys had tough of a SGG to Unarmed Archetypes? Since the monk really doesn't do it for me I was wondering if some boxing, wrestling, etc options could be done properly through archetypes.
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Would it be unbalanced, brokken or in some other way wrong for me to give both classes the youxia archetype and have them stack?
I would lose the bonus feat at fighter 1 and all of the monk Ki Master abilities but I would (eventually) get 20 levels of youxia archetype.Good, bad, what?
It *should* be fine. Certainly when building the system I wanted to make sure standard multiclassing would work. It never occurred to me someone would multiclass in different core classes with the same archetype package, but it doesn't seem to violate any rules, and ought to be balanced.
It's definitely something I'm going to have to address in an upcoming book!
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Would it be unbalanced, brokken or in some other way wrong for me to give both classes the youxia archetype and have them stack?
I would lose the bonus feat at fighter 1 and all of the monk Ki Master abilities but I would (eventually) get 20 levels of youxia archetype.Good, bad, what?
It *should* be fine. Certainly when building the system I wanted to make sure standard multiclassing would work. It never occurred to me someone would multiclass in different core classes with the same archetype package, but it doesn't seem to violate any rules, and ought to be balanced.
It's definitely something I'm going to have to address in an upcoming book!
The Genius Guide to Multiclass Archetypes. Coming soon to a game store near you. You heaerd it here first, folks.
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The NPC turned out so well that I decided to make him a recurring ally instead of a one encounter thing (a half Ñandu Lapith was just too cool), so thanks for the insight.
You are very welcome! I'm glad to hear you;re finding your use of our stuff in your campaign cool enough to keep around!
Also I was curious if you guys had tough of a SGG to Unarmed Archetypes? Since the monk really doesn't do it for me I was wondering if some boxing, wrestling, etc options could be done properly through archetypes.
It's certainly on the table. I have a few things in playtest, but so far I don't have the ideas up to SGG standards. It's tricky to create an archetype that works well (for example) with barbarian and fighter, but isn't overpowered for the rogue and monk. And, oddly, vice versa.
Since one of my design goals is to make archetype packages as widely applicable as possible, I'm just not satisfied with what I have, yet. Call it a work in progress.
The NPC turned out so well that I decided to make him a recurring ally instead of a one encounter thing (a half Ñandu Lapith was just too cool), so thanks for the insight.You are very welcome! I'm glad to hear you;re finding your use of our stuff in your campaign cool enough to keep around!
Also I was curious if you guys had tough of a SGG to Unarmed Archetypes? Since the monk really doesn't do it for me I was wondering if some boxing, wrestling, etc options could be done properly through archetypes.It's certainly on the table. I have a few things in playtest, but so far I don't have the ideas up to SGG standards. It's tricky to create an archetype that works well (for example) with barbarian and fighter, but isn't overpowered for the rogue and monk. And, oddly, vice versa.
Since one of my design goals is to make archetype packages as widely applicable as possible, I'm just not satisfied with what I have, yet. Call it a work in progress.
I'd love to see how it turns out. Unarmed Archetypes if done right could be very cool. We have players using the Vangard as a Samurai type plus our Youxia/Spellblaze Ranger not to mention the Shadow Assassin for those Ninja types, keep it up and I won't need an oriental book...
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I'd love to see how it turns out. Unarmed Archetypes if done right could be very cool. We have players using the Vangard as a Samurai type plus our Youxia/Spellblaze Ranger not to mention the Shadow Assassin for those Ninja types, keep it up and I won't need an oriental book...
I am really thrilled to hear how much use you're getting out of Super Genius material. But believe me, *I* want an Asian-themed Paizo book, for all the new toys it'll give *me* to play with!
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I'd love to see how it turns out. Unarmed Archetypes if done right could be very cool. We have players using the Vangard as a Samurai type plus our Youxia/Spellblaze Ranger not to mention the Shadow Assassin for those Ninja types, keep it up and I won't need an oriental book...I am really thrilled to hear how much use you're getting out of Super Genius material. But believe me, *I* want an Asian-themed Paizo book, for all the new toys it'll give *me* to play with!
I also can't wait for a good ol' Oriental Adventures style book! I had probably the best campaign (and one of the funniest moments ever) using that book!
Oh, and a vanguard as a samurai ... that is a really cool and interesting idea!